VLDB – We’ve Moved! Returning To Our Founder’s Roots
Myself and the rest of the Liverpool-based members of VLDB recently moved offices. This move represents a 30-year journey back to where I started. Allow me to explain… ‘Back in the day’ there were two main employers in Old Hall St, the centre of Liverpool’s CBD: Royal Insurance (‘The Royal’) and Littlewoods. The Royal was […]
Analytic Maturity Models ML & AI
Can analytic AI & ML models be mature?
The Exploration of Programming Languages – Standards of a Coder
Having been involved in IT for 30 years I have often been left bemused by the standards used by some programmers and sometimes imposed by programming languages. I started on Cobol. There were strict naming standards for file division, working storage and linkage section variables so you knew what you were dealing with.Indentations were mandatory, […]
30 Years In I.T. …You’d get Less for Murder!
A few weeks ago marked 30 years since yours truly started out as a graduate IT trainee at Royal Insurance (now RSA) in 1988. Back then, there were no PCs, just dumb terminals; no mobile phones, just landlines; no email, no internet. But the biggest shock of all: other people could smoke at your desk! […]
Technology, Prediction, and the Problem of Change
Mini-disks, Sabre-toothed Chickens and Pizza Grease – a Deadly Serious Discussion of Technology and Prediction. “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air…”— Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848) When […]
Google’s Big Data Head Fake
Did Google really send us on a 10 year head fake?
Is Hadoop Failing?
Well, is Hadoop failing?
To Hadoop Or Not To Hadoop?
Is Hadoop Right For Everyone? Across many organisations we find ourselves answering the same questions around Hadoop technology.We understand that senior level executives read broad sheets, the business press – and even the IT press -for the next buzzword to take to the monthly board meeting. But, just because ‘sexy’ organisations likeGoogle, Facebook and Yahoo […]
Spark, Shark and MapReduce
Who will win the Big Data bake-off between Spark, Shark & MapReduce?